"My boyfriend has been kidnapped," she said, pressing both of her hands to the counter to lean over it. "It has already been called in by Maisie Hall down at the gas station." Violet paused to look at the screen of her phone. "He has now been gone for just over thirty minutes, so I want to know what is being done about this."
A mixture of confusion, terror, and disgust swept over the woman's face in turns. "Which boyfriend?"
Violet's jaw clenched so hard that I thought something was going to break. "Considering that Luke and Cy are both standing right here? Since you obviously know enough about me to know that I have more than one, then do the fucking math yourself. Ashton Walker is missing. He's also a public figure, a multimillionaire, and the kind of person that will make really good headlines on the news. So, let's just stop fucking around and you can get an officer out here to talk to me about it, okay?"
"You can't file a missing persons report until they've been gone for more than seventy-two hours," the woman said in a bland voice, as if she'd done this a million times.
Violet slapped her hand down on the counter, the sound of it ringing out across the room. Then she raised her voice a few more levels. "That's bullshit, and it's not a law. If this is your attempt to run me off, just know that I am not going away. I'm not going to sit down and shut up. And I am certainly not going to let any of you push this aside and think that you can get away with it. I am reporting a crime currently in progress." Then she turned up the volume a little more. "My car has been abandoned. A man has disappeared. Threats have been made saying that people in this town will make him permanently disappear. I also have a really good attorney and know that even police officers can be considered accessories to murder. Who wants to try me? I have nothing left to lose, so you can either come out here and arrest me, or you can come out here and do your motherfucking job!"
"Violet." A door opened at the far end of the room, just past the counters, and Dan stepped out. "Talk me through what's going on."
So once again she recited what little she knew. I had absolutely nothing to add, and I felt more useless than I ever had in my entire life, but there was one thing I knew. No matter what happened now, it wasn't going to end well. That meant we needed to start letting people know. We needed to give everyone a chance to prepare for this.
Keeping my voice low so that I wouldn't interrupt Violet, I pulled Luke aside. "We need to tell Emily to get the kids out of school," I whispered. "Scott is still at the store, waiting for Ash - and he's not going to show up. If you want to call them, I can call Cessily."
"Already called Cessily," Luke assured me even as he was reaching for his phone. "She said she'd handle the rest of the rainbow."
Then he pressed a button, lifted his phone to his ear, and walked back to the front side of the room. Once again, I had no idea what to do. I wasn't going to pace, but damned if I didn't want to. I didn't want to be standing here. Every instinct in my body told me to get out there and track him down - even if I had to do it on foot.
I also knew that that was stupid. That was my fight or flight response kicking in. I needed to just breathe slowly, engage my rational brain, and make good decisions so that I could help instead of hinder. This was Ash. I knew him almost as well as Violet, so what the hell would he be doing? If someone came after him, he wasn't so arrogant that he would just stand there and take it. He would try to run. The problem was where. Behind the gas station and Grill was a massive pasture covered in scrub, mesquite trees, and who knew what else. That was the most likely place.
Then Luke called out, "Violet, is Ash on your phone plan?"
"It's a family plan," Violet told him.
"Emily said to try finding his phone. If you're on the same plan, you should be able to track the last location." Then he snarled under his breath. "Which is probably in the car."
But Violet had snapped to her feet and was grabbing her phone, swiping at the screen almost manically. "No, Maisie said that his phone wasn't in the car. She checked." She flipped again, tapped, and then wailed in frustration. "How the fuck do I do that?"
Dan pulled the phone from her hands and started messing with it. "It's an app. Here, you're going to have to fill in this information." He offered Violet the phone back.
She tapped as quickly as she could, then sucked in a breath. "Where the fuck is that?"
Dan looked up at Luke. "Blackjack Road area. Violet, you're riding with me. Luke, Cy, I don't care if the two of you follow us or head back home."
"Following," I said, giving Luke no other option.
We headed out the front door. Dan caught Violet's arm and guided her to the back. I had an irrational urge to turn around and follow her, not wanting to let anyone else out of my sight, but I knew Dan would take care of her. Besides, she was just heading to his police cruiser. In two seconds, we would be following them. This was okay. This was when I needed to use my rational mind.
Luke and I climbed back into his truck. He barely had the thing started before Dan pulled up, stopping at the driveway to wait for Luke. We pulled in behind them, and Dan turned on his lights. He left the sirens quiet, but when we hit the road, we were not going slow.
That made me feel better than anything. Speed helped. It made me feel like we were getting somewhere – anywhere – a little faster. Hopefully, Ash was out there, waiting for us. I hadn't seen the map, but the way Violet had reacted, it couldn't be close.
"Luke, where is Blackjack Road?" I finally asked.
"It's a long and winding gravel road outside of town," he explained. "It's the kind of place that everybody knows, no one goes, and nothing is down there. Cy, it's outside of town. I don't just mean the city limits. I'm talking about the police jurisdiction. If you want to get a little crazy, you go to Blackjack Road, because that's where you're not gonna get busted."
"Please still be alive, Ash," I breathed as I turned to look out the window. "You promised me."
"It could just be his phone," Luke said, sounding like he was trying to reassure me, yet failing miserably.
So I didn't say anything. Right now, I wasn't the only one suffering. I wasn't the only one here who loved that man. My pain might feel more immediate to me, but that didn't mean it was greater than what they were feeling. No matter what, I wouldn't take this out on the two people I still had left.
Eventually, we turned down a country road. It didn't take long before the blacktop ran out and the gravel took over. Dan still had his lights on, but he was no longer driving quickly. Luke slowed down a little more, putting a bit of distance between him and the police cruiser. That allowed the dust to settle, which made it easier to see out the windows.
"Keep your eyes on the ditches," Luke said. "It's not gonna be easy to see a phone, but it has to just be his phone. They must have thrown it out or something. This is not the kind of place that Ash would ever go. They wouldn't leave him here."
Which meant that Luke was struggling to find some logical answer the same way I was. Some way to make all of this make sense and still give us a happy ending. Unfortunately, that wasn't how real life worked. Happy endings only came in fairytales, and our fairy godmother had passed away earlier this year.
